


A second beginning

by theobscurepotato



Category: Coldfire Trilogy - C. S. Friedman
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:34:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29934849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theobscurepotato/pseuds/theobscurepotato
Summary: Damien stared at him. "You," he said finally, stupidly. "But you said goodbye.""A farewell implies a parting of ways. Which our present situation obviously belies." Dark eyes studied him with a mix of concern and annoyance. "Vryce, what exactly is your plan for yourself? Beyond the obvious drinking and stewing in your own misery and killing demonlings for coin.”Tarrant has plans. Damien's just along for the ride.
Relationships: Gerald Tarrant & Damien Vryce, Gerald Tarrant/Damien Vryce
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

_"God has given you a chance to redeem yourself. A second beginning. 'Don’t you waste it,' he whispered."_

C.S. Friedman, Crown of Shadows

_“For both of us, it had simply been too enormous an experience. We shared it by not talking about it. Does this make any sense?”_

Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

I.

It took another week for the Forest to be fully, finally consumed.

The Black Ridge Tavern continued to draw in more business each day. Even now the barroom was thick with tourists: red-faced and flush with liquid courage, toasting to the end of it all. The richest among them were already guaranteed a spot to accompany the clean-up crews scheduled to sweep the smoldering remains of the Forest in the morning.

 _Late-morning,_ Damien thought cynically. The way they were drinking, no one was rising early, no matter how enthusiastic they may be to slaughter any remaining demonlings. Damien had already been solicited by more than a few parties who had applauded his marksmanship these weeks past. He hadn’t yet agreed, which wasn’t exactly a no.

He really should feel... _something_ , he thought. It was finally over. The Forest in ashes. A changed world. And a final goodbye that he would just have to make his peace with. He should feel better, and yet -

Tomorrow, Damien told himself, shaking his head. He'd cut out of here, make some money on the road. Someone else can babysit the rich, hungover fools traipsing through the wasteland that was once the Hunter’s domain. Not him. Time to move on.

Tomorrow.

But tonight, he'd indulge in his sorrows and drink away the memory of someone who he had risked his very soul to save. And if the crowd around him thought he was raising a tankard (and another, and yet another) to some better future, they wouldn’t exactly be wrong.

***

Damien stared into his mug of ale and tried to will himself to his feet. The fresh-lumber scent of the new tavern was now overcome with the smell of spilled ale, piss, and vomit. Odds were high that he was going to contribute to one of those categories before reaching his bed. Some wealthy tourist had procured a bottle of vodka with a demon's claw suspended in the alchohol, sharing amongst the table, and the liquor mixed poorly with the imported ale. There had been cards...and maybe, dancing? Again, he cursed himself for picking an upstairs room. Not like he'd be alone if he slipped under a table and rested on the floor for a while...

So in his current state he felt, rather than saw, the body slide onto the bench next to him, so close they were nearly touching. Even through his blurred vision, he could still make out olive skin and a blue silk shirt. His breath caught in his throat when dark eyes looked into his own. 

"You are still grieving," the youth said. His tone was difficult to place.

Damien stared at him. "You," he said finally, stupidly. "But you said goodbye."

"A farewell implies a parting of ways. Which our present situation obviously belies." Those dark eyes studied him with a mix of concern and annoyance. "Vryce, what exactly is your plan for yourself? Beyond drinking and stewing in your own misery and killing demonlings for coin.”

Damien laughed bitterly. "Plan for myself? Dammit, Gerald, only you would -" And Damien froze, staring wildly at him with a look of pure despair. The youth raised an eyebrow, a familiar gesture on an unfamiliar face.

"It's alright," he said, after a moment's pause. "That is, of course, my name. Gerald Tarrant."

"I thought -" Damien began, but the youth - _Gerald!_ was already shaking his head.

"I may have been overcautious. I had to test some things, first." He could have been commenting on the weather for how casually he spoke. Like it was all nothing to him. 

“For vulk’s sake!” Damien erupted. He wanted to shake him. “I let you walk off like a stranger because you insinuated that just my knowing you could damn you. And now you walk in, same as usual - playing games that you don’t trust me to play.”

Suddenly all of it - the pain, the fear, the frustration, and hope of the past month - was simply too much to bear. His vision blurred with hot tears and he attempted to stand before the blood rushed to his head and he pitched forward. But instead of collapsing onto the table, he felt himself being pulled to his feet. A slender arm slid around his waist to steady him. 

"I apologize,” Tarrant said quietly as he guided him across the room. “Once again, you deserve better from me. However, I'm not going to explain myself tonight. So please don't ask me any questions. Just because the danger to me is lessened doesn’t mean it has been fully mitigated. There will be plenty of time to discuss in the morning."

"In the morning," Damien repeated thickly before stumbling on the first step. The arm around his waist tightened. 

“Yes." There was a hint of a smile in his voice. "Although I’ll be curious to see what condition you are in by then. Now, one foot in front of the other, Vryce. I lack both the strength and the desire to carry you up these steps.”

Leaning heavily against Tarrant, Damien took another step.

***

"Damien."

He must have blacked out because one second he was climbing the stairs, and in the next he was sprawled across his bed. Damien closed his eyes against the dizziness and prayed for sleep. 

Someone was pulling off his boots. This someone was also speaking quietly to him but his head spun too wildly to make any sense of the words. The voice was soothingly familiar and the blanket being drawn over his shoulders was soft and his dreams - for the first time in a fortnight - were bloodless and free of pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> re-read the Coldfire Trilogy and remembered 1) how much I loved these two 2) how much I hated the ending


	2. Chapter 2

II. 

It was early morning when Damien awoke. The curtains to the room were opened so the whole room was filled with morning light. Even shutting his eyes again did nothing against the feeling like his skull had developed its own pulse. He groaned as he sat up and tried to extricate himself from the tangle of blankets when he realized he was not, in fact, alone. 

Tarrant sat in a high-backed chair by the window, an open book on his lap. He was dressed in a pale shirt with wide sleeves, his dark hair loose and unbraided. When he noticed Damien was awake, he inclined his head in greeting. 

_Not a dream, then_ , Damien thought, staring at him. 

“Good morning,” Tarrant said, gratingly pleasant. Of course he would enjoy this. “There is tee and some sort of fruit pastry. Not the greasy repast you could probably use in your current state, but I had limited options.” 

Damien turned to the nightstand. He stared at the apricot tart resting in a pool of cream and his stomach groaned audibly. Tee was the safer bet. Tarrant watched him with thinly veiled amusement as he picked up the delicate cup instead and gulped its contents down.

“Gerald,” he said tiredly, setting his cup aside. “I don’t know where to start, and I sure as hell don’t want to ask any dangerous questions. Can you please explain what the vulk is going on?” 

“When we last met we spoke of several...hypotheticals,” Tarrant began. “An exercise of the imagination.” 

“Yes.”

Tarrant looked away. “I have since revised some of my hypotheses.” 

“Yeah, I guessed,” Damien said testily. He vividly remembered the sinking weight in his chest as Tarrant had walked away from him through the crowd, when he thought their paths had diverged for good. 

Something seemed to agitate Tarrant as well. He stood from the chair and began to pace in front of the window. “To illustrate this theory, think of your Patriarch. He was both a man, and the embodiment of the Church. What if the two identities were separated, so much so that the death of one does not equate the death of the other? 

“I don’t think he was someone who could separate the two,” Damien said. The thought of the Patriarch was still a source of pride and pain to him. “His sacrifice was that much more powerful because it was both.”

“I don’t disagree.” He shrugged elegantly. “Merely searching for a metaphor. But now to apply this concept to our topic of the Hunter. For nine hundred years, almost no one linked him to the man he was. Think of how many people had strong feelings around these, shall we say, _different entities_? Very divergent, powerful feelings. So one could postulate that a sacrifice of one, or even two aspects would not negate the core, if one was careful. We are speaking of someone who still managed to keep his very soul in negotiations with the Unnamed. And perhaps he did that by requiring a certain degree of separation.”

Damien frowned. “This doesn’t sound any different than last week’s ‘hypotheticals’.”

“I am trying to safely navigate this little...exercise of the imagination. Be patient, Vryce.” Tarrant sighed and turned away. Tension was just visible in the set of his shoulders. “What if, before this sacrifice, something of the Hunter’s essence had already been taken? And what if, by whatever twist of luck or fate, this Iezu seed had grown into a new life just afterward? Would the fae then recognize this being as the Hunter?” 

Tarrant stood illuminated in front of the window. His voice was quiet. “One could assume that with the Hunter in another body, living as a completely new entity, it would be a clean division, and the need for the man to take a different form would no longer be necessary.” 

He turned back to face Damien again, illuminated in front of the window, the light of the white sun creating a halo around his face. No, Damien, realized, it wasn’t the sunlight at all - his hair was visibly lightening. As he watched, his features smoothly re-arranged themselves into a face he never thought he’d see again. Gerald Tarrant closed his eyes and when he opened them, the dark had given way to pale silver. 

Something in Damien’s chest twisted at the sight. “What if,” he said, and grinned. “Really, Gerald, you vain bastard.”

“I wasn’t entirely sure that would work,” Tarrant admitted, meeting his eyes with a smile. For a second, it was a smile unlike any other Damien had seen from him - a mix of relief, and disbelief, and real joy, before a well-known smirk covered it. For a long moment, they simply looked at each other. 

“Why?” Damien asked. Why would the Gerald Tarrant he knew take such a risk? It didn’t seem like him to throw caution to the wind like that. 

But it did seem very human. 

Tarrant hesitated. “Why -” 

“Because I have a theory of my own,” Damien interrupted. “If you’re willing to entertain it. I think this test was just for your vanity. But I also think that when you first appeared to me, you weren’t testing anything.” 

There was a slight frown line between Tarrant’s eyebrows but he remained silent.

"I think you took that risk...for me,” Damien ventured. “Even weighted against the real possibility that telling me would undo everything, you still did it.” 

For a moment, they were both silent, neither one daring to look at the other. Something had shifted in the energy of the room but Damien didn’t dare examine it any more closely. 

“Of course it was for you,” Tarrant said, simply. 

***

“So, let me get this straight,” Damien said, pouring himself another mug of black coffee. “Am I free to speak plainly? Because the Hunter was just one of many identities. Is there anything I need to throw in the ‘hypothetical’ bucket?” 

The restaurant was just as newly built as the tavern, with wide glass windows emphasizing the view of Shaitan in the distance. Tarrant had chosen a table for them on the opposite side of the room, slightly less crowded and with a view of the valley below instead. All that glass meant that the room was already warm and filled with light. 

_Bet you’re a morning person now,_ Damien thought with a smile. 

Tarrant, who was busy spreading loquat jam on a piece of brioche, paused, and looked back over his shoulder to ensure no one was within earshot before speaking quietly. “The Neocount title has also been safely claimed, although I have no desire to test that boundary with its current owner.” 

“There’s another identity that I’m thinking of.” _The one tied to what you once called your greatest life’s work._

“This form,” Tarrant gestured to himself. He had transformed back into the dark-haired youth before they had left their room. “Does not replace the default. Hypothetically - and yes, Damien, I know you hate when I say that, I can see that look, but forgive me my caution - hypothetically, if one needed the ability to hide their true form, a sacrifice of a powerful aspect would be needed.”

“So you can still -” Damien waved his fork. “You know.” 

“A certain amount of ability is required to hold this form, yes. However, if I am as I should be, I can bank that energy. This morning's experiment confirmed that for me. But it is a finite allotment.”

 _If he is as he should be._ Damien thought back to his earlier transformation. Tarrant looked far better than the desperate man he had left back at the Hunter’s Keep. In fact, even his scar had healed...Damien smiled. “You can Work, but you’re limited. So, strictly for emergencies?” 

Tarrant raised an eyebrow as he sipped at his tee. “Of course,” he said, but offered no further comment. 

Damien leaned back in his chair. The full meal had done wonders for his hangover. For the first time since Shaitan, he felt hopeful. 

“It still feels a little surreal,” Damien admitted. “Sitting here with you, no one trying to kill us, no boats, no obligations, no plans…” He looked at Tarrant’s expression and groaned. “You have a plan, don’t you.” 

“Of course I do,” Tarrant said haughtily. “Now that I know I’m able, I want to analyze the Iezu. Much of my old research is lost, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t feel the need to try.”

“So, where to, then?” Damien shook his head. “As you’ve apparently planned this all out without my input. Per usual.” 

Tarrant ignored the bait. “To visit an old friend of yours in the rahklands. But before you protest, we’ll be taking a land route this time. I've had enough of boats for a human lifetime.” 

Damien stared at him. “But that’s impossible! We wouldn’t have risked the Canopy if there was a passable route through the Worldsend Mountains.” 

He waved a hand. “It’s good to check your assumptions sometimes, Vryce. Otherwise you might miss something.” He reached into the leather satchel under the table and pulled out a well-worn scroll. “Here. Review the map. I have a few things to take care of today, but I’ll see you later this evening, if not earlier.” 

Tarrant pushed his chair away from the table and stood to leave. Damien saw him hesitate momentarily. “I am assuming, of course, that you would accompany me. If I am wrong in that -” 

“Gerald,” Damien said, holding his gaze. “I’ve told you before - don’t be a fool.” 

Tarrant merely smiled in response and left to settle the bill. Alone, Damien unfurled the map and began to trace their path. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can Gerald love sweets and sunlight and still be in character? *shrug* I headcanon it. 
> 
> I love and welcome your comments!


End file.
